John-117
|fourth = Master Chief Petty Officer|fifth = UNSC-Era, 26th century|sixth = Human|seventh = Male|eighth = |ninth = Blue|tenth = Brown|eleventh = Pale|imagecaption = John in 2552.}}Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 (surname classified), better known to the public and to history as the Master Chief, was a human male who lived in the 26th century. He was a SPARTAN-II commando of the UNSC Navy's Special Weapons division. He served as one of the most important figures of the Human-Covenant War and in human and even galactic history. After nearly thirty years of active duty, he was one of the most decorated war veterans of the United Nations Space Command, having fought in more than two hundred ground engagements against the Covenant and Insurrection, earning every major service medal except the Prisoner of War Medallion. For much of his career, John served as the leader of SPARTAN-II Blue Team. As the Human-Covenant War neared its end, most of John's fellow SPARTAN-IIs were killed in action during the Fall of Reach. However, John and his AI companion Cortana fled Reach and their vessel fortuitously arrived at Halo, Installation 04, a one hundred millennia-old superweapon created by the Protheans to destroy their parasitic enemy, the Flood, by killing all life in the galaxy. Having destroyed Halo, the surrounding Covenant fleet, and the Flood forces on the ring, John-117 returned to Earth and resisted the Covenant's impromptu invasion. Pursuing the invaders' flagship, the Master Chief encountered Installation 05, where civil war soon broke out within the Covenant. Weeks later, John followed the remaining Covenant forces to the Ark, the Halo Array's control center, which he disabled before the Halos could be fired. John went missing in action after the war's final battle in December 2552, having stymied the threat of the Covenant, the Flood, and the Halos. In the interbellum, John was lauded as a hero, and though he was officially declared MIA like all Spartans, he was ostensibly believed by the UNSC to have perished. After his recovery in July 2557, he played a key role in the conflict between the UNSC and the Didact's Promethean forces and Covenant devotees, beginning on the shield world Requiem. This culminated in an attack on Earth and the Didact's temporary defeat, as well as the loss of Cortana. John subsequently reunited with Blue Team and with their help, vanquished the Didact for the second time. John and his Spartan compatriots then departed Earth to embark on new missions, eventually falling out of contact with the UNSC. Among most humans John is known simply by his rank as the "Master Chief" or (erroneously) the "Chief". Within the military he is most commonly identified as "SPARTAN-117" or the phonetic callsign "Sierra 117". As with all Spartans, John is regarded by the Covenant (apart from those allied with humanity) as a "Demon;" however, John specifically is known as "the Demon", an epithet he earned after the destruction of Installation 04. Allied Sangheili like Arbiter Thel 'Vadam and Shipmaster Rtas 'Vadum have referred him simply as "Spartan". Early childhood Born on March 7, 2511, John lived with his mother and father in Elysium City, on the colony world of Eridanus II. He attended the Elysium City Primary Education Facility Number 119. As a child, John had brown hair, freckles, and a small gap between his front teeth. In a memory, John recalled that his mother was kind and smelled of soap. The would-be UNSC Marine Lieutenant Parisa was a childhood friend of John's. John once saved her from drowning at Lake Gusev, after which John promised to marry her and keep her safe. A photo of the two was also taken by Parisa's father soon after, and would be kept as a memory by Parisa long after she thought John had passed away. He also was a friend of Ellie Bloom, living next to each other in their childhood, and Katrina, who played obstacle race with him and Ellie. At the age of six, he was identified by Dr. Catherine Halsey as one of 150 preliminary candidates for the SPARTAN-II program. John was an ideal physical and mental candidate, standing a head taller than the majority of his schoolmates, having greater physical proportions, possessing greater strength, exhibiting superior reflexes, and having an aggressive drive for success. By the time he was conscripted, he had a string of forty-five victories in what Dr. Halsey referred to as a "brutal version" of the game of King of the Hill, resulting in him having a chipped tooth and his opponents suffering various bone fractures. In response to the covered-up Flood attacks on Luna in 2513, production of the SPARTAN-II Program was rushed even further. Halsey was forced to isolated candidates not only on their genetic makeup, but also by their resilience against disease and viral infection. In his youth, John was only sick once with a severe case of the flu. officers.]] When Dr. Halsey and Lieutenant Junior Grade Jacob Keyes visited Eridanus II in 2517 to study him, they were impressed with his intellect and luck. In a final test of his viability as a candidate, he was asked to determine which side an old coin would land on. He watched the coin as it flew in the air and caught it before it could land; correctly stating which side was face-up, on the side of the eagle. Later that same year, John and 74 other six-year-old children were conscripted to the planet Reach: they were covertly kidnapped from their homes and replaced with flash clones to cover up the kidnappings. All of the clones would later die of seemingly natural causes as a result of their accelerated growth process, with John's flash-clone dying on December 7, 2517. Spartan training John and the rest of the children chosen for the SPARTAN-II program were brought in the Reach FLEETCOM Military Complex, their new home for the next several years. There, Dr. Halsey informed the children of their new purpose: they were destined to become the protectors of Earth and all its colonies. The next morning John discovered his service tag, stitched into his training uniform, and his new name: John-117. John began adjusting to his new life, training with other Spartans under Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez. In their first training exercise, John was grouped with fellow trainees Kelly-087 and Samuel-034 in a game of "Ring the Bell". John rushed ahead of his teammates and crossed the finish line first; however, he was befuddled to learn that his team had lost, as Kelly and Sam came last. This taught John the importance of teamwork and the next day, his team scored higher. John soon bonded with Kelly and Sam, who would become his first and only friends among the trainees for most of his life. For eight years John was schooled in history, military strategy and tactics, and weapons, and was given extreme physical training. During his training, John used to tease Serin-019 and her habit of eating leftovers from meals of the other candidates. After being scolded by Mendez, he quickly quit the practice. Indeed, John would quickly become much more reserved, quiet and goal-focused in the following years, abandoning his more colorful childhood personality. John quickly proved himself to be considered one of the program's top candidates. Both Dr. Halsey and Chief Mendez identified him as one of four emerging leaders within the SPARTAN-II group, along with Kurt-051, Jerome-092, and Frederic-104. Dr. Halsey believed John held both the skills and natural ability to lead the entire Spartan-II group. CPO Mendez disagreed with her assessment, instead believing Kurt would fulfill the role as team leader. John's leadership skills were correctly observed, as the result from their mission clearly solidified his role as the overall leader of the SPARTAN-IIs. He also became the established leader of SPARTAN-IIs Blue Team. Taking the initiative When the Spartans were eight years old, they were sent on a training mission in which they were dropped over a forest located deep in one of Reach's Highland Mountains. They were expected to get safely to their extraction vehicle, an Albatross dropship. The trainees also had instructions to leave the last member arriving behind, or their punishment would be severe. John refused. After organizing them, the Spartans looked to him as their leader. It was a role he was surprised to be given, but quickly accepted, illustrating his evolving get-it-done personality. When the group came across the Albatross, it was guarded by un-uniformed UNSC Marines, leading John to assume they were a threat. He quickly devised a plan to eliminate the hostiles, capture the dropship, and ensure the safe extraction of every team member. He also decided to take responsibility as the last arriving trainee singled out for punishment. He quickly hijacked the dropship with the help of the AI Déjà, and attacked the guards with stones, killing them. Chief Mendez was not initially pleased, feeling John had violated the boundaries of the test and permitted unnecessary casualties. However, both Mendez and Halsey quickly recognized John's initiative, and promoted him to Squad Leader. After this, despite the other Spartans rising in rank and leading independent teams, John remained the de facto leader of the Spartans as a whole. SPARTAN physical augmentation At the age of 14, John and the other Spartans underwent the dangerous SPARTAN-II augmentation procedures. These procedures resulted in the death of thirty trainees, with twelve more physically disabled. John was one of thirty three Spartans who made it through the process unscathed, while the wounded were sent into the Office of Naval Intelligence. Even before his cybernetic and genetic augmentation, at 14 years of age, due to superior genetics, John had a physical body of an 18-year old Olympic athlete. Far beyond the physical alternations, the enhancements boosted the Spartans reflexes, strength, enhanced eyesight, and rendered their bones nearly unbreakable. Following their treatments, John and the other Spartans were transferred to the [[UNSC Atlas|UNSC Atlas]] to recover in a microgravity environment. During his first visit to the Atlas' gym, John was confronted by four ODSTs, whose sergeant then ordered the five of them into the boxing ring. In the ensuing fight, John inadvertently killed two of the ODSTs, and left the others severely injured. According to Major Antonio Silva, this incident was orchestrated by the Office of Naval Intelligence in order to test the Spartans' augmentations. While John had tried to avoid the confrontation, he nonetheless felt guilt at being forced to kill other human beings, but felt by following the orders of the sergeant he did the right thing. Then-ODST Anthony Petrosky, who witnessed the fight, would later refer to his comrades as "lambs to the slaughter"; he described John's punches as rapid-fire explosions, and that the fight was over in less than five seconds. Following their return to Reach for further training, John and the other Spartans were soon relocated from their barracks in the FLEETCOM military complex into the abandoned titanium mines nearby. Left in the caverns virtually without equipment and pitted against Marines wearing heavy Mark I powered armor, the Spartans continuously overcame the opposition Chief Mendez planned for them using impromptu equipment and tactics. Insurrection service John-117's first mission was during the Insurrection Wars. The Spartans were pitted against Insurrectionists within the asteroid belt of the Eridanus system, where his homeworld was located. He was shot in the side while leading his squad to capture the rebel leader Colonel Robert Watts. The official results of the mission listed eleven dead enemy soldiers and an unknown number of rebel civilians. He received a Purple Heart upon the completion of the mission for taking a round in the side. Battle of Chi Ceti IV at a Covenant vessel.]] Three months after Eridanus, John and his Spartans were briefed on the massacre that took place on Harvest shortly after first contact with the Covenant Empire. A short time later, the [[UNSC Commonwealth|UNSC Commonwealth]], under the command of Captain Wallace, brought the Spartans and Dr. Halsey to the Damascus Testing Facility at Chi Ceti, where they recieved their MJOLNIR Mark IV Powered Assault Armor. When a Covenant ship, the Unrelenting, attacked the Commonwealth, John and the SPARTAN-IIs took part in their first engagement with the Covenant. The Spartans used thruster packs to launch themselves from a Pelican dropship. Each Spartan carried an ANVIL-II warhead to be used against the Covenant ship. Only two other Spartans reached the ship with John: Sam and Kelly. They entered the vessel through a puncture in its hull, caused by a MAC round from the Commonwealth. They succeeded in completing the mission and destroyed the Covenant ship, but due to a breach in Sam's armor, he was unable to leave the Covenant ship. Volunteering to stay behind and ensure the destruction of the enemy vessel, Sam was killed in the ensuing explosion. John was deeply affected at the loss of one of his closest and only friends. The victory showed humanity that the Covenant could be beaten, but only at a high cost. Battle of Circinius IV In 2526, John, Kelly and Fred-104 were sent to support Marine forces in a search-and-capture mission against an Insurrectionist leader; the skirmish quickly escalated as the Covenant's arrival forced the UNSC troops to briefly side with the rebels. Sometime later, he and Blue Team were sent to Circinius IV to reinforce the UNSC's defenses there. The Spartans eventually received a distress signal from a cadet squad pinned down at the Corbulo Academy of Military Science. John defeated the Sangheili Zealot that had been pursuing the squad, and radioed Kelly to rendezvous with him and the survivors at an extraction point up north. John, who identified himself only as "Master Chief", cleared the way to the deceased General Black's Warthog and ordered Cadet Thomas Lasky to drive. The team was ambushed by Jackals while en route to the Pelican, causing irreparable damage to the Warthog. The team continued on foot and were relentlessly pursued by a pair of Hunters. One Hunter was killed in the ensuing battle, but in the process the squad was left with only stun rounds. John planned to put himself in the line of fire, while the cadets ran for the extraction point. However, Cadet Lasky, motivated by the death of Cadet Chyler Silva, took the Master Chief's place. The remaining Hunter fired at Lasky while John planted his last grenade inside the Mgalekgolo's worm colony-body. After rejoining Fred and Kelly aboard a Pelican dropship, John gave Lasky an armor fragment from the Hunter and commended the cadet on his bravery. Lasky kept the shard as a memento of the battle. He would not meet John again until 2557 on the planet Requiem. John would latch onto the term "Master Chief" (his actual rank), and would eventually become known primarily under that alias. Later war service John participated in the Harvest campaign in early 2531, where he encountered the body of fellow Spartan Daisy-023. Later that year, he led Blue Team in a raid against Camp New Hope on Victoria; Blue Team had been disrupting assets from General Howard Graves' Insurrectionists cell. John and most of the other Spartans were captured, though they were soon rescued by Kurt-051; their escape inadvertently led to Graves' death. John led Blue Team during the Battle of Jericho VII in 2535, where they killed thousands of Covenant soldiers with a HAVOK tactical nuclear weapon. Operation: WARM BLANKET and MJOLNIR Mark IVb power armor. |left]] Shortly after the Battle of Miridem in 2544, John, along with Fred-104, Kelly-087, Solomon-069 and Arthur-079, was part of a mission to rescue Dr. Catherine Halsey from a Covenant fleet. The team utilized several advanced prototypes during the operation, including MJOLNIR Mark IVb armor, MA5C assault rifle prototypes, and OF92/EVA "Booster Frame" fighters, which were designed for ship boarding actions, and infiltrated the assault carrier Resplendent Fervor. While clearing the assault carrier, John encountered Sangheili Major, Thel 'Lodamee, who challenged John to an energy sword duel. Near victory, Thel was forced out of the duel when his Fleet Master Luro 'Taralumee separated the lower section of the assault carrier to kill the Spartans, recalling him back into the upper section. Both soldiers were left with their battle unfinished. The Spartans completed their mission and rescued Dr. Halsey, but Arthur and Solomon were killed in the battle. John was saddened by his teammates' deaths and swore he would become stronger, vowing to keep his comrades alive at all costs. 2552 service Sigma Octanus IV By summer of 2552, he had received every medal awarded by the UNSC except the Prisoner of War Medallion. During the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV in July 2552, John led a platoon of Spartans to aid the Marine forces on the planet. John, leading Blue Team, arrived at the city Côte d'Azur to detonate a HAVOK nuclear warhead to clear Covenant forces from the city. However, the heavy Covenant presence outside the Côte d'Azur Museum of Natural History raised his suspicion, prompting him to lead Blue Team into the museum. Inside the museum, John found out that the Covenant were scanning a piece of rock while sending the information to a Covenant ship in orbit. After dispatching two Mgalekgolo guarding the rock, he took the rock and left the museum with his Spartans. John ordered the detonation of the HAVOK warhead in the city, and, along with other Spartans, Marines, and rescued civilians, returned to the [[UNSC Iroquois|UNSC Iroquois]], which brought them back to Reach. Fall of Reach On August 29, 2552, during the Covenant's ongoing invasion of Reach, John received an upgrade to the Mark V MJOLNIR armor as well as an upgrade to his neural interface, allowing him to support an artificial intelligence. He was then introduced to and partnered with the AI Cortana, who would eventually become his closest friend and confidant. Before embarking on a high risk mission to capture a Covenant Prophet, the two were put through a suicidal test in an attempt by Colonel James Ackerson to defame the SPARTAN-II program. Despite the dangers, John refused to cheat the test and was determined to win it by Ackerson's rules. Despite nearly being killed, Cortana and John's teamwork allowed them to prevail in an impossible situation, the first of many such accomplishments. On the following day, the majority of the SPARTANs were deployed to protect the generators which powered Reach's twenty Orbital Defense Platforms. John, along with Linda-058 and James-005, was sent to Gamma Station to destroy an unsecured navigation database onboard the prowler [[UNSC Circumference|UNSC Circumference]]. If the Covenant obtained the database, they would discover the location of every human world, including Earth. The NAV database was destroyed, but Linda and James were ambushed by Covenant Sangheili. John fought one such Sangheili in close quarters combat, killing the alien before he could compromise the mission. The rest of John's team was not so fortunate; James was lost in space and Linda was critically wounded during the fighting. John saved four Marines on the station, including Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson who, unbeknownst to John, was in fact a fellow SPARTAN from Project: ORION. The team returned to the [[UNSC Pillar of Autumn|UNSC Pillar of Autumn]] and was placed into cryo-sleep as the ship landed on and later fled Reach, and, following the Cole Protocol, jumped into warpspace. With coordinates discovered by Cortana, and in the hopes of leading the Covenant away from Earth, John would soon find himself involved in the most critical battle of the war to date. Installation 04 Arriving at Prothean Installation 04, it soon became clear that the Halcyon-class cruiser UNSC Pillar of Autumn had been followed through warpspace by a dozen Covenant ships. These vessels engaged the Autumn and sent several capture parties to board the ship. Captain Jacob Keyes ordered John to be woken from cryosleep, and tasked him with ensuring the escape of Cortana while he crash-landed the Pillar of Autumn on the unidentified ring. Keyes was, however, captured almost immediately after landing by the Covenant fleet, being interrogated for classified ONI intelligence. The surviving human personnel launched a mission to recover Captain Keyes, who was being held aboard the CCS-class battlecruiser Truth and Reconciliation. Under the cover of night, John-117 and a fireteam of ODSTs boarded the ship via its gravity lift.14 After several brief engagements aboard the ship, the rescue team managed to establish a secure control of the ship's command center. John-117 went ahead and freed Captain Keyes and several other captured Marines. When they returned to the command center, they found out that the ODSTs have been slaughtered by Stealth Sangheili. Furthermore, Echo 419 was unable to retrieve the rescue party due to Covenant air patrols. Following Cortana's suggestion, Captain Keyes manned a Covenant dropship and returned everyone to Alpha Base. Using the intelligence gathered by Captain Keyes and Cortana, the human forces amassed a squadron for an assault on the Silent Cartographer island, in their attempt to uncover the location of the Installation's Map Room. John-117 and a Marine assault team, supported by Echo 419 and Bravo 022, penetrated the Covenant defenses, journeyed deep within the island's chambers and access-ways, and discovered the location of the Installation's control room. Events leading to the discovery was not easy; the Covenant managed to temporarily lock access to the chambers within the island, prompting John-117 and the Marines to navigate to the island's security chamber. As they deactivated the security, Bravo 22 and its payload fell prey to Covenant fire. After the Battle of the Silent Cartographer, Cortana instructed Foe Hammer to deploy them using navigations she gathered from the discovery of the control room. Alone, John-117 was inserted into a network of tunnels occupied by Covenant forces. The Spartan then received a radio transmission from Fire Team Zulu, who were pinned down in a valley, as he fought his way through the network of tunnels. John-117 assisted Fire Team Zulu in eliminating local Covenant forces and their armor support, then journeyed through a system of adjacent canyons until reaching a dead end, where Fire Team Zulu requested to be evacuated. John-117, with Cortana providing guidance, eventually discovered a large pyramidal structure bulit into a cliff, on top of which was the control room. Upon reaching the chamber, Cortana accessed the Installation's systems and discovered a terrible secret quarantined within the Installation. Fearing for Captain Keyes' safety, she instructed John-117 to head to his last known location. Believing himself to be perhaps the only surviving SPARTAN-II, John committed himself to the destruction of any Covenant unit unfortunate enough to encounter him. Initially, the fierce fighting on Halo was solely between UNSC and Covenant forces, but after the Covenant unwittingly released an ancient parasite, the Flood, the majority of both forces became infected or destroyed. John-117 was sent out by the Installation's monitor, 343 Guilty Spark, to retrieve the Firing Index, an activation device for the Halo ring. Seeing the danger posed by the Flood first hand, John willfully took up the role as the Installation's "Reclaimer". Upon John's return to Halo's Control Room, Cortana revealed that Halo's true purpose was not only to destroy the Flood, but prevent its spread by targeting all sentient organic life within its blast radius. John was then forced to disrupt Halo's firing system by disabling the ring's phase pulse generators in order to delay the Monitor's plan. John carved a path through the three-sided conflict between the Covenant, the Flood and the Forerunners' Sentinels. Soon after, he tried to rescue Captain Keyes, but was too late. Captain Keyes had been transformed into a proto-Gravemind Flood form. After infiltrating the Covenant cruiser, Truth and Reconciliation, once again, the Chief managed to retrieve the Captain's neural implants, which he used to activate the Pillar of Autumn's self-destruct sequence. After the sequence was aborted by 343 Guilty Spark, he proceeded to manually overload the fusion reactors, which would subsequently destroy both the Pillar of Autumn and Installation 04. After successfully destroying the fusion reactors on the Pillar of Autumn, John-117 used a Warthog to reach the extraction point where Pelican Echo 419 was to recover him. John-117 reached the extraction point, only to witness the Pelican crashing after being shot down by a pair of Banshees. Quickly making his way to the ship's Launch Bay 7, John used the sole Longsword fighter stored there to escape Halo just before the Autumn's engines went critical, destroying the ring .Category:Heroes Category:Humans Category:History Category:UNSC Category:UEG Category:UNSC-Era Category:26th Century